enough to be unconscious but nevertheless nourishing his energy.
Breakfast, before dawn, was another can of tuna fish, followed by a can of cold tomato soup, the cans again buried. By the duck hunter's hour, he was on his fragile craft, poling his way along the shore, never venturing to the center, ready to dip into shore at the first sign of disturbance.
He reached what he felt must be Thebes well before dark, having pulled off the river only once, when the powerful churning of engines far off indicated a heavy craft; it was the weekly Mississippi Bureau of Prisons boat, a steam-driven thirty-five-footer, with its supplies and its cargo of human woe, a few more unfortunates destined for the penal farm. He studied the craft through his binoculars, noting nothing peculiar about it except a large white box with an odd insignia of red triangles arranged around a red dot, where a red cross would be if the box contained medical supplies. He'd never seen such a thing; he recorded it in his notebook, and having done so, promptly consigned it to his subconscious, forgetting it totally at his functional brain level.
Earl laid up across from the town, watching and waiting.
It became clear soon enough that there had to be some sort of station on that side of the river, near enough to the town for the officers to run their patrols, and they were aggressive enough and changed horses enough to suggest that they were close by.
And Earl could guess where it would be. To the northwest, equidistant between the town and the still unseen Thebes Penal Farm for Colored.
Earl knew it was there; he could tell by the barking of the dogs.
THE dogs.
At least they weren't free-roaming. Instead, they were kenneled at the back of the wire compound, and the deputies were so complacent that they didn't patrol the perimeter with them or any such thing, or keep a night watch, or any true security measures. That's how atop the world they felt. The deputies were like kings of everything, these boys, atop their horses, with their chained dogs, easy, confident masters of the universe of piney woods and bayou and cowed Negroes.
Earl studied the kennels: there he saw blue-tick hounds, low, slobbery, sinewy barking and sniffing machines. There were twenty or so of them, and they gamboled and played in their pen, but if they were put on his trail, he knew they'd be remorseless. It was the dog way.
Earl feared dogs. On Tarawa, the Twenty-eighth Marine War-Dog teams had sent their animals into blown- out bunkers in search of live Japs.
The dogs' noses were so much finer than humans', they could pick out the smell of the living from the dead, and when they found a wounded man, they'd tear him up bad, usually to death. They'd drag them out of the bunkers or pillboxes, swarming and yapping and biting, and you could see the Jap, bled out, sometimes concussed, the poor man fighting against them on some kind of general principle of survival but without much energy. As much as Earl hated the Japanese, he hadn't enjoyed seeing that; the packs of dogs ripping at the wounded man, usually by this time awash in blood that made the dogs even more insane. Meanwhile, their handlers, by nature brutal, urged s the animals on, laughing at the spectacle. The dogs snapped and, chewed, or they hung on and shook and twisted and pulled. No man J not even a Jap soldier, should die like that, torn to pieces by dogs as iji sport. Earl bet that after the war, those dogs had been destroyed. You couldn't have a dog like that in a civilian world, a dog encouraged to the furthest extremes of its savagery. Yes, they were our dogs, but still: he shuddered. Some things were too much.
These dogs looked the same. They were beautiful and sleek, but they'd been corrupted by men and nourished toward specialized forms of violence. In a way, they represented all the evil that men could wreak on the world, impressed upon the innocence of a dumb, brute animal. He saw that in the kennel where it was the rule of the pack, a rough-and-tumble world of tooth and fang. A big blue seemed to run the place, and he kept the young dogs away with the strength of glare and intensity. Just like in the human world. That's why Earl never wanted any part of a pack. Meanwhile, an old man who worked the dogs looked more dog than human; he was more an ambassador to the dog world from the human race than a full human himself. The other deputies kept apart from him. He'd be the master of hounds; he'd be the one tracking Earl if it came to that.
Earl found the compound at dawn by simply following the horse tracks.
It was a rude building, made of logs, more cavalry outpost than anything. For these boys practiced their trade from horseback, and held their whole operation together from a horse, with a dog or two on) chains.
So: a kennel, a stable, and a main house, all log, all secure behind a high barbed-wire fence in the piney woods. And of course, no Negroes allowed near. Maybe the dogs had been trained to smell Negroes. The main house had the lock-up attached; that's where Sam had to be, or else he was up the road in the penal farm itself, and if he was there, there'd be no getting him out without a division of Marines. Earl watched from deep in the trees, saw well-fed, confident men locked in routine.
Patrols, lots of organized activity. Boss man was a big fellow he heard someone call Sheriff Leon, to whom all others deferred.
He was sure Sam was here, because Sheriff Leon checked in to the lockup, and it seemed to be the point of a lot of energy.
Earl knew he had to get in. He studied on the place, trying to figure out a way.
It had to do with the wind, he knew. The wind might carry his scent.
If the dogs picked it up, they'd throw up a fit; that might agitate the deputies, and once agitated, they might begin to nose around. They'd let the dogs out to hunt him, and the dogs would find him, and that would be that. He'd be taken and he'd be in with Sam. What good would that do?
Earl patiently charted the breezes on the first night. He learned it was most still between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00, just before the dawn. He knew he had to come in on the other side of the compound from the dogs, and that he had to move slowly. If he sweated, the dogs would smell it; their noses were so much better, and they were creatures of pattern, used to things being just so and prone to acting up when they weren't.
At the same time as he exhibited a hunter's patience, Earl was himself becoming increasingly disturbed. It's one thing when deputies live with families, and go on duty and off, and when off go back to a civilian world, be with their kids and wives, go to church or the movies. But these boys weren't like that. Instead, they were kept living out here in the woods, isolated, in uniforms that sparked fear and mystery, behind wire and protected by dogs. They were more like a conquering army in an occupied territory than police officers.
And they were young, too. Somehow, they were paid enough to put up with the dormitory-style living far off in the woods, and the constant discipline of the military. So there was some money behind this, certainly more than could be justified by the paltry ruin that was Thebes County, a town locked in mud living off a penal installation upriver still a mile or so.
Earl didn't like it. The dogs, the horses, the guns, the fear of the townspeople, Sam locked up way out here. He didn't like it one bit. earl scrubbed himself in a cold-water stream until he shivered, then put on the last of his clean underwear. He would sweat some, though it was cold, but still he'd leave less man smell that way.
He slithered to the wire at 4:30, and watched. In the lock-up, a candle burned, meaning someone had night duty, but Earl bet he was asleep. The big log house was before him, between him and the dogs.
Earl had patted dark mud against his face, as he'd done in the Marines with burnt cork, and stripped to his dungarees and a dark shirt.
Getting through the fence was tough, and the barbs cut him in a dozen places, shallowly, but enough to sting like hell and leave a tiny blood track. Easier to simply cut the wire; but if he cut it they'd notice it the next day.
Earl lay inside the wire, waiting. He was unarmed, except for a K-bar knife, black-bladed and leather-gripped, which he might use in a pinch on a dog. But no dogs howled or barked, no one called. He lay still for the longest time. Then he stood, and walked.
He walked nonchalantly. He didn't sneak or dash or evade. If anyone should see him from the house, he looked like he belonged. He walked across the yard to the house, waiting every second for a challenge, but it never came. These boys felt secure in their place.
He skittered around the house to the lock-up, and peeked in; he could see a deputy asleep at the desk, the fire in the stove having burned low, and beyond three cells in the back, two open, one locked. That's where Sam would be. But Earl didn't enter. Instead, he crawled around, past the door to the back, then found purchase at a window and gutter and swung his way up, as silently as he could. Again, no challenge came.
He eased to his haunches, then to his feet, and staying at the edges eased around until he thought he was over the locked cell.
